Friday, July 17, 2009

Day 3, 22 June 09, Journey on the bike begins..

After 2 days of travel, we reached Jammu 3 hours late than the expected arrival time. It took us 1 hour to unload the bike.Meantime, we had a quick meal at the Jammu-Tawi station and then started our journey around 1.30 pm.Temperature was quite high in the Jammu, should have been around 45. So, it was quite tough to ride on the bike because high temperature was causing dehydration. We had to take frequent halts for water. As per our actual plan, we were supposed to reach Srinagar same night.After so much of delay in schedule, we decided to make it a 2 day journey and take a halt somewhere on the way to Srinagar.First suggestion was to stop at Ramban which is around 160 Kms from Jammu.Then came the trouble, the bike had some problems with clutch :).. So, it was not accelerating good enough. It was really impossible to overtake slow moving trucks as well.To make the matters worse, we lost our track before Udampur. We took Jammu-Katra-Udhampur route and traveled some 50+ Kms extra through some of the bad roads.Actually, Jammu- Srinagar road is much better. Anyways, this was our first lesson.

On the way, we asked one guy about staying options in Udampur. He told us about his friend's Hotel in Batote which was 2-3 hrs of distance. Also, he added that it would be a better alternative being colder than Udampur. Then, we continued further. Around 6 pm, we were in Kud and Batote was still quite far. So, we decided to halt there itself and continue the next day.Our total journey on that day was around 170 Kms but actual distance covered was 120 Kms :D.We went to sleep after a good dinner hoping to start early the next day.